A pivotal issue within computing cultures of today is the overemphasis on boys and men as the primary consumers of technology. Children learn by example and since the majority of media images consist of boys playing computer type games and girls playing with stereotypical princess type dolls; this contributes to the lack of involvement in science and technology by our young women.

It hurts us all to have this subconscious of pigeonholing of our children, and to help counter this for Ubuntu's community, we would love to have a collection of examples of young girls (toddlers through to 12 years old) playing with -- and loving, and being encouraged to pursue -- Ubuntu. This would allow parents of girls to demonstrate that it really is ok to be intrigued by the shiny screens, blinking lights, tappity-tap of keyboards, and faint whirs of computer fans.

The girls do not have to be alone in the photos, and photos taken prior to this announcement are eligible. We are not expecting any particular pose, but we would much prefer candid shots -- they say SO much more. We do prefer that the images come at a large resolution, in a standard format (JPEG, PNG) and not embedded in documents. Please email your photos (or links to flickr, etc.) to ubuntuwomen.competition@gmail.com by UTC 23:59 14th of May 2010.

By submitting a photo, you acknowledge that it will be posted on the Ubuntu Women Website under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works [0] license, with special considerations for use within the Ubuntu Women and Ubuntu project (please see Photo/Model Release waiver). If you prefer that your photo to be posted under a less restrictive license such as Creative Commons Attribution [1] or Public Domain [2], then feel free to let us know when you submit. As this competition involves visual depictions of people, we will require that a "Photo/Model Release" waiver be signed for each person in the photo. A parent or guardian of minors must sign this waiver form for their children or charges.

There will be two (2) prizes up for grabs. One (1) prize will be given to the photo that the community feels sells the "girls love computers" line the best. One (1) prize will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager will be drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on May 28th.

We will celebrate World Play Day by announcing the two winners. The first of whom will be the popular voted Community Choice, and will receive a Dell Mini 10n (or equivalent net-book based on availability). The second winner chosen by random drawing will receive a Canonical Sponsored Ubuntu SWAG collection that includes: Mouse- pad, Silly putty, Recycled Ubuntu Notepad, Ubuntu pen, Ubuntu lanyard, Ubuntu pack of 3 pin-badges and 1 Organic Circle of Friends Ladies T-shirt.

Good Luck!

p.s: Please pass this along to as many Linux-using parents of young girls as possible -- the more the merrier!